Hi guys, what do you think this is all about? I was guessing they were those little 6" type ornamental toy things, but I don’t see size or weight in the description. In my defense, I’m dumb, but I’ve been studying the listing and I don’t know what one gets for their $79.99. It’s almost like they forgot a couple of zeros in the prices.
Yeah, it looks like someone is hosting a scrape of the Gibson site and misplaced the decimal point.
(I wouldn’t spend a lot of time there, no telling what dumb idea they’ve gotten into their heads.)
There are tons of sites like this across the web. They take well known, desirable products and lift the images and copy from a legitimate source. Then they set up an e-commerce site with prices a fraction of reality. Like a lot of good scams, they want anyone with any sense of what could possibly be real and what isn’t to self-select out, leaving only the most credulous marks. How the back end of the scam varies. They might take your money and send a worthless box of cheap unrelated products. They might take your money and send nothing. And they might take your money and line you up for other scams, maybe even getting your banking info and sucking you dry.
In the world of “wow, what a great time to play guitar”, I picked this up with the silly coffin case used for about $225. It looks like someone might have tried to learn guitar (there was a clip on tuner, some strings and picks in the case), but they didn’t put a mark on this guitar if they did. It looks new. It needed its intonation set when I got it, but the action is fine. After correcting that, it sounds and plays great.
It is odd in that it’s a solid mahogany body instead of the semi-hollow masonite bodies the old ones had. My only guess is that is less labor than building the semi-hollow bodies. I do wish it had an aluminum nut like the old ones. If the current one breaks, I’ll replace it with one. (checks Allparts) Ugh, like every other Danelectro specific part, it’s sold out right now. Oh well, at least I could fashion that part myself, in a pinch.
Either way, a hell of a lot of guitar for very little money, even considering the silly case.
Very cool! How do those lipstick PUs sound? I’ve never played them before but I’m guessing they are a bit odd, kindof like the gold foils in my Harmony.
You want scabpicker’s opinion of course but for what it’s worth:
Actually, the video @74westy posted is pretty good. I’ve got a bass, a 12 string, and now the 6 string with these pickups - they’re very flexible in all of them.
But, a guitar isn’t just it’s pickups, the wiring on these guitars is a complete package with the pickups. Traditionally, they have 1Meg (usually brighter) tone pots and 100K (usually darker) volume pots, both odd values to see on a Fender or a Gibson. On top of that, the selector in the middle puts the pickups in a series (this one’s even hum cancelling). If I have a complaint about that video, he doesn’t get into the sounds you can get with different tone/volume combinations. My Longhorn bass doesn’t have a switch, so you pick the pickups by blending the knobs. It can get in the ballpark of any bass with passive pickups, you just have to find the right tone/volume combo. The concentric knobs can make that weird (and sometimes the long pointy volume knobs on the bass get in each other’s way), but it’s something you can get used to.
The pickups themselves are pretty low impedance, 4K-5K ohms. So they end up being very clear, with a lot of upper harmonics available. I think “bell-like” is a pretty good descriptor, again the tone knobs can make it sound more like a normal guitar a lot if you so desire.
A couple of days ago, I got the itch to look at used guitars. I had a PRS SE1 that was just sitting there. I never bonded with it. So I went to one shop and they had nothing. I was naively thinking I could find a beat up, yet perfectly playable, Telecaster that was somehow also affordable. Yeah, right. Then I looked at another shop’s website, and fell in love with a brown Hagstrom “Ultra Swede”. Not really what I was looking for, but I had a memory of taking bass lessons a half century ago, and picking up my instructor’s Hagstrom, and making an absolutely effortless barre chord. I should have, then and there, dropped the damn bass and bought that guitar. I turned out to be the worst bass player that will ever be. Anyway, it’s a nice guitar! Reviews seem to agree that it’s fair quality with no resale value. Ok, I’ll just keep it 
About 30 years ago I bought a Hagstrom at a yard sale for $25. It had more buttons, knobs, and switches than an airplane cockpit. I never could figure out what most of them did.
Yeah, those are oddballs. At $25, was it playable?
I’m trying to remember… I don’t even know what happened to it.
I had a very rock n roll evening. Studio time was booked. Beforehand I went to Guitar Center to look into an additional distortion pedal to round out my sound; the guy sold me on a Friedman BE-OD Deluxe (Friedman Amplification - BE_OD DELUXE PEDAL). It’s a two pedals in one rig with all sorts of tone options. One channel a bit more boostier than the other. Volume, bass, mid, treble, gain, presence for each channel plus a “Tight” switch, whatever that is.
Off to the studio where I was only scheduled to lay down some vocals, which I did, but I decided I wanted to re-do a solo with my new box. I had no other gear with me so I borrowed a Les Paul gold-top and played it through an Orange amp and a huge cabinet. I felt like Slash.
So much fun tonight!
Sounds like a fun night! Were you working on something of your own, a collaboration or a band project?
Nice pedal. The layout makes me think of older MXR distortion pedals, but really old ones would normally have no option for 9V operation (plus it allows for 18V operation, nice), and I can’t imagine Friedman not designing their own pedal from scratch. My guess is that the “Tight” switch varies a high pass filter to control the lows. Distortion can get “flabby” sounding if you don’t keep those under control.
That’s been my experience. On Egnater amps and I think some pedals I’ve seen, “Tight” is the opposite of “Deep”: roll off the low end on the Tight setting to dethump the signal a bit.
'Zactly, not to be confused with a “bright” switch, which will just emphasize the highs and not affect the lows at all.
Grr, I have yet to meet the bright switch I liked.
Edited to add: and I’ve yet to meet the high pass or low pass filter that I didn’t find useful in some context. Used them this afternoon to get several tracks I’d recorded from stepping on each other. Those little things work wonders.
Band project - I Suppose You Know Karate (ISYKK). This is our second CD. Our first (on AppleMusic, YouTube, Spotify, all the usual places) was a six song EP - this one I think we’re going to have 10 songs, so a full album. I had no songs on the first disc but I’ve got three songs that I’ve written on this project. It’s the old Beatles rule - if you write it; you sing it - so that’s what was on tap tonight.
Hehehe, I got lucky in my last (still technically current) band - Drawer Devils. We’ve got one record out, and another that’s largely finished and in need of release before it fades even to us. I had a hand in writing a few of the songs, and even some of the lyrics. But all of the lead singing duties fell to the singer, who is a natural front man. That’s great for me because I’m inevitably not fond of either my lyrics or my vocal delivery. Also, I find playing and singing at the same time a difficult chore. Just playing guitar or bass? Oh yeah, I can do those drunk (within limits). Singing and doing either? They’d better be closely related parts, or it’s effort. As a natural front man, he’d just power through any and all of those, of course.
Well, he moved a state away at the end of the year, so that band’s not full time by any means - not to say it was my primary job before, my day job pays for that endeavor. Either way, I’ve been working on my own while trying to figure out a route to a new band to occupy my time. I’ve got all sorts of music I like a lot that I’ve recorded and/or am still honing. However, (of course) I just can’t seem to come up with vocals and lyrics I’m satisfied with.
Part of me thinks I just need to do a lot more lyrics and vocals, trash them. and then do a lot more until I start to be either satisfied or sick of the process where I figure “that’s a stopping point” and move on to the next song. Another part of me thinks I need to find someone to collab with, even if it’s my old singer in another state. On the third hand, my wife kind of thinks a lot of it doesn’t need any vocals and asks me if I’ve thought about doing scores for film/video. I have, but I like playing rock shows, even if they are shitty ones. I guess I could convince five or so people to involve themselves in my instrumental rock fantasy.
Ehh, screw it, all of those sound appealing now that I’ve typed it out. I’ll probably do a combo of them all at some point. Thanks for reading my barely related to guitar self analysis if you’ve gotten this far.
I’m still loving the Silvertone, BTW!
Here’s that gold-top I got to play at the studio the other night. I wasn’t actually playing anything in this pic (its not even plugged in - this was post-session) but I really wanted a picture of me with it. I got to play this really nice grand piano too - though I’m a dubber at best on the keys:
Also, I can’t remember if I mentioned in this thread or not, but for my birthday last year my uncle gave me his Tele - not a Squire, full on Tele. Made in China, it has this Strat-type cut away on the top. I had to have the torsion bar cranked on and a switch replaced but it sounds like Stevie Ray (or my version thereof, for what that’s worth).
12 string guys, have you ever tried this? I’m sure I didn’t come up with it. Using a Snark on my high E and B, I ever so slightly undertuned one, and over tuned the other. I have a lousy ear anyway, but it seems to add just a little extra to the sound. When they were strictly in unison they didn’t really add much to the fullness. Or maybe I’m imagining things. This is on a new Danelectro 59x12. Anyway, try it- it’s free!
My approach is to tune them the same and then play three or four chords in my ham-fisted Hulk-smash style and you end up with the same thing.
But you make an excellent point. The B and high E strings being slightly out of tune with themselves creates a natural chorus effect that makes 12 strings sound so good. I imagine the octave courses have the same effect in the higher overtones when they’re a little out.